In reviewing the last novel of this author, we took occasion to comment on his repetition of himself; and had not but a bare six months elapsed since the publication of that article, we should have thought, that he had commenced this work with our criticism before him; for the whole conception of the Ancient Régime—according to the preface—is essentially different from that of Mr. James’ former romances. To do him justice, he seems to have set out intending to write something really new. But a dog that has once tasted blood is forever killing sheep,—and our novelist, after the first few chapters of the work, runs into all his old habits. Indeed, had he not told us in set phrases that his object was to show the gradual changes of a female mind from infancy to womanhood, and that too while she was in the peculiar position of a ward of a man to whom she bore no relationship: had he not told us this—we say—and added that he had in the Ancient Régime attempted a new and more gentle style, we should have divined neither the one fact nor the other. There is too much _clap-trap_ in the work before us. Most novelists are contented if their hero saves the life of his mistress once in the space of two orthodox volumes. But James thinks this entirely too little. His heroine seems put up like a ten-pin, only to be bowled at; for her life is preserved once from a wolf—once from a robber—and once from an assassin—and beside this, her honour is kept in jeopardy, as a kind of running commentary, through the whole book. We are tempted to say with Titmouse, “’Pon honour—most uncommon luck.” Then, too, everything happens, not as it would in life, but just as it ought to happen. Such a chain of fortuitous circumstances, following each other link by link, we venture to say, author never imagined, since the old romances of chivalry gave up the ghost. The deserted babe passes into the very hands to which it _should_ go—the supposed father gets a place in the police, _the very thing for all hands_—the young lady when grown up falls in love with the son of the _only man living who knows her parentage_—the king is frustrated in meeting Annette, until after Du Barry has given him _a new object of pursuit_—the Baron de Cajore is arrested at the _very instant_ he is arresting the hero—Ernest de Nogent is rescued in the park at Maupay _just as_ he is about to be stabbed from behind—and last of all, the assassin de Cajore is killed off at the end, _in the very nick of time_, and when all the actors are conveniently assembled to look on, at a nice little tea-party in the forest. Nothing, indeed, is done naturally: everything is brought about by luck.